Apple TV Lag / Slow unresponsive menu

[sammcj]

Hi,

Got an ATV 40gb today (yeah it was cheap).
Cool wee device but god it's laggy as hell.

At times its completely unusable due to the interface lag.
I'm pretty sure it's not doing much in the background, it should have had plenty of time to index the library since I synced it 6 hours ago.

Any hacks or tricks to speed it up?


Streaming from Imac 2.8 / 360gb itunes library / latest itunes / no movies synced / Gigabit ethernet connection.

[DoFoT9]

802.11g? 802.11n? wired? what.... more deets

[sammcj]

802.11g? 802.11n? wired? what.... more deets

Sorry, Wired over my gigabit switch.

[DoFoT9]

Sorry, Wired over my gigabit switch.

sweet thanks. thats really retarted.. it happens when your just browsing the menu and no movie playing? odd

[sammcj]

sweet thanks. thats really retarted.. it happens when your just browsing the menu and no movie playing? odd

Yup, its horrid! often when scrolling through artists or youtube clips it just stops and the buttons make no clicking noise, then in about 30secs to a min all the noises catch up and play and it comes back to life

[DoFoT9]

Yup, its horrid! often when scrolling through artists or youtube clips it just stops and the buttons make no clicking noise, then in about 30secs to a min all the noises catch up and play and it comes back to life

youtube clips could be your internet connection (lag), is that fast enough?

browsing artists on a shared library shouldnt cause that.. maybe something is going on in the background.

have you tried turning it off and on again?? :p

[sammcj]

youtube clips could be your internet connection (lag), is that fast enough?

browsing artists on a shared library shouldnt cause that.. maybe something is going on in the background.

have you tried turning it off and on again?? :p

It buffers / plays movies fine, even hidef clips.
I've tried restarting it twice.

[DoFoT9]

It buffers / plays movies fine, even hidef clips.
I've tried restarting it twice.

how very odd... i have no fix sorry. are there any updates you can do?

[sammcj]

how very odd... i have no fix sorry. are there any updates you can do?

Thats ok, thanks for replying so quickly, It's the latest version.

[Bye Bye Baby]

That is strange- I have a similar but wireless setup and I have no lag at all. My library is about 400 GB.

Is your conetnt ripped or bought? The only thing that comes to mind.

Let us know.

[sammcj]

That is strange- I have a similar but wireless setup and I have no lag at all. My library is about 400 GB.

Is your conetnt ripped or bought? The only thing that comes to mind.

Let us know.

A lot of it is 256 - 320kb ripped from cds.

[DoFoT9]

A lot of it is 256 - 320kb ripped from cds.

i wonder how big the images are... that wouldnt really effect it but..

[synthfreek]

Something similar happens to me. I sync content to the aTV and sometimes when scrolling through the TV Shows, Movies or Podcasts menu the cursor doesn't respond. It only happens for a few seconds but like the original poster said, after a few secs all the delayed button presses happen at once and the cursor jumps up or down several places.

[tom1971]

I would do a factory restore and start from scratch. That should do it.

[MattG]

Mine's always been laggy. Done multiple resets. I think that's just the way it is.

[ugacdawg]

I have three of them, but I don't sync anything... streaming only... over 2TB of data easily... never lags at all, for any reason. And they are connected over wireless N too.

Perhaps it has something to do with the local drive... could it be fragmented or just slow to spool up or search?

Try doing streaming via your ethernet connection and see if it gets perkier...

[Bye Bye Baby]

I have ripped and bought content movies and video. I have all content on a drobo attached to a mac mini as a media server/centre that streams wireless to an ATV.

I use frontrow and ATV. I do not like plex/hulu/boxee etc. I have found them to be very disappointing.

I have no lags whatsoever. I also have an iMac that sometime accesses the content but only a few songs occasionally.

I have the house wired with cat6 and all N wireless network. The intenret connection is fibre optic (not that it matters internally).

[ebrightc]

I had the same problem recently, and I found that it was trying to update the software constantly. I eventually did an factory reset, manually updated the software through the ATV interface, and then left it alone while it updated. It took a while, but after that I haven't had any problems. I think before, it was trying to finish its update routine, but as I was messing around and restarting, it couldn't finish, so it remained laggy while it was constantly trying to update.

[kadeschs]

I have the same problem occasionally. Mine generally happens when powering back up from standby mode. It's like it doesn't come all the way from standby. Standby mode can be problematic. Warm reboot usually fixes the issue. It's most likely something going on in the background. For example, automatic syncing of iTunes with ATV. I had terrible problems with losing connected mounts. I've since fixed the problem completely by removing Microsoft in favor of FreeNAS for serving up my media to ATV. I'm also using the extremely buggy NitoTV stuff. That's probably 99% of my problems. I put up with it all because it provides what Apple should have to begin with.

[sammcj]

Have done a full factory reset.

No difference, still lagging up, got so bad it froze before so I went back to my mac and noticed it was syncing.... WTF?!

[Bye Bye Baby]

Have done a full factory reset.

No difference, still lagging up, got so bad it froze before so I went back to my mac and noticed it was syncing.... WTF?!

The default setting is for syncing. It can take forever.

I am wondering if your unit may have a problem? Not 100% sure but it is possible.

I have never noticed these problems. Why don't you take all content off your ATV and just stream. See if that works.

[dmm219]

I might recommend switching to custom syncing if you haven't done that already...

[sammcj]

The default setting is for syncing. It can take forever.

I am wondering if your unit may have a problem? Not 100% sure but it is possible.

I have never noticed these problems. Why don't you take all content off your ATV and just stream. See if that works.


yup its 100% streamed with nothing synced...
could it be trying to connect to another computer on my network that's not properly shared in some way?
ie. my flatemates ubuntu machine ?

It seems so random when it does lag up, it's as if it trying to load cover art for the next page down but can't multitask?

[sammcj]

seems a bit better today, though did lag up when scrolling through songs inside an album before...

[jaw04005]

Honestly, I've never used an Apple TV that didn't lag (and I own three). It's just the nature of the device.

I suppose a better description would be the Apple TV is slow to respond to remote commands. If you get too far deep into its menus and press the menu button on the remote quickly, chances are you're going to have issues as it tries to get back to the home menu.

Generally, after a few seconds I get two or three beeps in a row and then it finally goes back to where I want it to go.

Apple needs to update it with more RAM and a faster processor.

[sammcj]

Honestly, I've never used an Apple TV that didn't lag (and I own three). It's just the nature of the device.

I suppose a better description would be the Apple TV is slow to respond to remote commands. If you get too far deep into its menus and press the menu button on the remote quickly, chances are you're going to have issues as it tries to get back to the home menu.

Generally, after a few seconds I get two or three beeps in a row and then it finally goes back to where I want it to go.

Apple needs to update it with more RAM and a faster processor.

Thats the general feeling I've been getting from it.
Would be better with an Atom processor in it and 512mb as apposed to the 256(?)

[sammcj]

Question:

If (in itunes) you right click on the ATV and select 'turn off syncing'

Does that stop files from trying to copy across to the ATV
OR

Does it stop the ATV from refreshing iTunes's music list? i.e. streaming

[kadeschs]

Thats the general feeling I've been getting from it.

Same feeling I get as well. It appears to be a RAM issue? You would think for the price that you pay that it would include at least 512 MB of RAM.

[rich2000]

Hmm I've not seen anything like that and I'm streaming over a wireless n connection to a library of well over 1Tb

[rhett7660]

Sorry to hear about your lag. I have 4tb worth of data both music and music and I don't have any lag. I can fast forward reverse pause etc. No lag.

What is the base computer that you are running from, speed, hard drive speed etc? What type if nic card does it have? What type of switch are you using? 10/100/1000?

Have you noticed if there are any kinks, nicks etc in your datalines? Just checking...

Large image files for the cover art I have noticed will cause a slight delay. I noticed this when I first starting ripping the movies. I now try to keep all my music files to 300x300 under 30-25K in size. I also keep my image files for the movies as low as I can also. Yes the pictures don't look as good but then again I don't have a lag. Something to think about.

[kadeschs]

Sorry to hear about your lag. I have 4tb worth of data both music and music and I don't have any lag. I can fast forward reverse pause etc. No lag.

What is the base computer that you are running from, speed, hard drive speed etc? What type if nic card does it have? What type of switch are you using? 10/100/1000?

Have you noticed if there are any kinks, nicks etc in your datalines? Just checking...

Large image files for the cover art I have noticed will cause a slight delay. I noticed this when I first starting ripping the movies. I know try to keep all my music files to 300x300 under 30-25K in size. I also keep my image files for the movies as low as I can also. Yes the pictures don't look as good but then again I don't have a lag. Something to think about.

I'm not sure why the focus is put on volume capacity when it comes to video playback? I don't see how these two things are related esp. when streaming. Maybe fragmentation or something?

Not sure on your point on the image files since the AppleTV downloads those for me automatically. They aren't that high res to begin with. Attempting to take the time to acquire my own and reformat them to an even lower resolution because Apple chose to gimp their ATV isn't very practical. Obviously, you don't want 25MB HD images displaying. I get that.

None of this fixes the hesitation problems when manipulating the main Frontrow menu. There are no images (or hard drive sizes) being displayed at that time.

[phillipjfry]

Honestly, I've never used an Apple TV that didn't lag ...

Apple needs to update it with more RAM and a faster processor.

+f'ing1

[rhett7660]

I'm not sure why the focus is put on volume capacity when it comes to video playback? I don't see how these two things are related esp. when streaming. Maybe fragmentation or something?

Not sure on your point on the image files since the AppleTV downloads those for me automatically. They aren't that high res to begin with. Attempting to take the time to acquire my own and reformat them to an even lower resolution because Apple chose to gimp their ATV isn't very practical. Obviously, you don't want 25MB HD images displaying. I get that.

None of this fixes the hesitation problems when manipulating the main Frontrow menu. There are no images (or hard drive sizes) being displayed at that time.


Well larger image files.. say 2-3 megs will cause a lag. Try the same file with a large image say 3 megs and then try that same file with a smaller image file say 30Kb or so. There is a difference in start up time on the file. At lease from what I can tell. Yes I have seen people put 25-40 meg picture files of cover art. I have seen it. Well if you don't want to downsize your image files that is up to you. I have chosen to do so, for the very fact I don't want lag.

None of this fixes the hesitation problems when manipulating the main Frontrow menu. There are no images (or hard drive sizes) being displayed at that time.

Well if you files are handled off of an external source, ie server or another computer running your media or external hard drive connected to another computer via usb, this will have an impact. Just because it is not displaying it doesn't mean it isn't being impacted. Maybe you should do some network speed tests to see what your network is doing when you are streaming your media? What are the constants and what are the drops? Especially when you are FF/RW/Pause/Play etc.

I would then check out avscience.com and look at the media and server section. See what people have done and tested. I think it will open your eyes on just how much this will impact the end unit. Heck there are plenty of folks with high end HTPC that still have lag on OTA high def content let alone blu-rays and dvd's they have ripped.

I would also look at how many clients are accessing the remote data at the same time?

Sorry all of this will have an impact when accessing your data. Especially since the AppleTV isn't a very robust end unit.

[sammcj]

Just to tidy this up as I have been away for a bit:

Lag = Still really bad


ATV hardware: latest available
ATV software: latest available
Network: GbE / 100/1000
Have tried swapping cable / switch
Streaming from Imac 2.8, 4GB Ram, 1TB hard disk / latest 10.5 and Itunes.
iTunes library size: 370MB (Audio only, no movies)
Not Syncing anything
Have swapped cables over to test.

[Tup]

Just started using aTV.

I experience menu lag in the following:


Youtube - as soon as I type I can see a search being performed controls then becomes unresponsive
Software update - while software is downloading menus can lag
Random menu lag - for no apparent reason.


All lag is in menus - control presses appear to be buffered, no problems with playing content. Media also streams/syncs with no issues.

Restart/Power Off/On & factory reset no effect menus still experience the above.

The lag is frustrating but I like the device otherwise.

[sammcj]

Just started using aTV.

I experience menu lag in the following:


Youtube - as soon as I type I can see a search being performed controls then becomes unresponsive
Software update - while software is downloading menus can lag
Random menu lag - for no apparent reason.


All lag is in menus - control presses appear to be buffered, no problems with playing content. Media also streams/syncs with no issues.

Restart/Power Off/On & factory reset no effect menus still experience the above.

The lag is frustrating but I like the device otherwise.

Welcome to my world.
Worst Apple product I have used let alone bought.

[sammcj]

OK I have no idea what is different this time round, but it seems almost fixed?
For the 4th time I've done a factory restore and it doesn't seem to be lagging nearly as much through my music.

After playing a YouTube clip last night it did lag up for about 30 - 40secs while it loaded the preview of the next two clips below which I thought was weird, but it also didn't let me login to youtube all yesterday so they may have been doing maintainance.

[Tup]

Since hacking & installing rowmote to use the iphone as an alternative remote I have had no lag whatsoever in the apple tv menus - something isn't right with the infrared remote controls or receiver I suspect...